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Process Election Data by Census Collection District

Source: R/process_ccd.R
process_ccd.Rd

Standardises column names in election data across the 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2022 Australian federal elections to ensure consistency. This function adjusts year-specific column names to a common set, including renaming vote counts and statistical area identifiers, and removes redundant columns. If an unrecognised election year is provided, the data is returned unprocessed with a message.

Usage

process_ccd(data, event)

Arguments

data

A data frame containing election data with an event column indicating the election year (e.g., "2013", "2016", "2019", "2022") and year-specific columns such as state_ab, div_nm, pp_id, pp_nm, and vote or area identifiers (e.g., votes, count, ccd_id, SA1_id).

event

A character string specifying the election event to process. Recognised values are "2013 Federal Election", "2016 Federal Election", "2019 Federal Election", or "2022 Federal Election". Other values result in the data being returned unprocessed.

Value

A data frame. For recognised election events ("2013 Federal Election", "2016 Federal Election", "2019 Federal Election", "2022 Federal Election", "2023 Referendum"), it contains standardised columns:

  • date (if present in the input)

  • event (the election event)

  • StateAb (state abbreviation)

  • DivisionNm (division name)

  • StatisticalAreaID (statistical area identifier; refers to 2011 ASGC for 2013–2016, 2016 ASGC for 2019–2022)

  • PollingPlaceID (polling place identifier)

  • PollingPlaceNm (polling place name)

  • Count (indicative count of votes cast per statistical area)

The year column, if present, is removed as it is redundant with event. For unrecognised election years, the original data frame is returned unchanged.

Details

This function processes election data by:

  1. Applying base column renaming common to all recognised years using rename_cols() (e.g., state_ab to StateAb, div_nm to DivisionNm).

  2. Removing the year column, as the event column already provides this information.

  3. For 2013: Renaming ccd_id to StatisticalAreaID and count to Count.

  4. For 2016 and 2019: Renaming SA1_id to StatisticalAreaID and votes to Count.

  5. For 2022: Renaming ccd_id to StatisticalAreaID and votes to Count.

  6. For unrecognised years: Returning the data unprocessed with an informative message.

The function assumes the input data frame contains the required columns for the specified event year, though column names may vary as per the original datasets. Note that StatisticalAreaID reflects different Australian Statistical Geography Standards (ASGC) depending on the year: 2011 ASGC for 2013 and 2016, 2016 ASGC for 2019 and 2022.

Examples

# Sample 2013 data
data_2013 <- data.frame(
  event = "2013 Federal Election",
  state_ab = "NSW",
  div_nm = "Sydney",
  pp_id = 101,
  pp_nm = "Sydney Town Hall",
  ccd_id = "12345",
  count = 500,
  year = 2013
)
process_ccd(data_2013, "2013 Federal Election")
#> Processing `2013 Federal Election` data to ensure all columns align across all elections.
#>                   event StateAb DivisionNm PollingPlaceID
#> 1 2013 Federal Election     NSW     Sydney            101
#>     PollingPlaceNm StatisticalAreaID Count
#> 1 Sydney Town Hall             12345   500

# Sample 2019 data
data_2019 <- data.frame(
  event = "2019 Federal Election",
  state_ab = "VIC",
  div_nm = "Melbourne",
  pp_id = 102,
  pp_nm = "Melbourne Central",
  SA1_id = "67890",
  votes = 600
)
process_ccd(data_2019, "2019 Federal Election")
#> Processing `2019 Federal Election` data to ensure all columns align across all elections.
#>                   event StateAb DivisionNm PollingPlaceID
#> 1 2019 Federal Election     VIC  Melbourne            102
#>      PollingPlaceNm StatisticalAreaID Count
#> 1 Melbourne Central             67890   600

# Sample invalid year
data_2025 <- data.frame(event = "2025 Federal Election", state_ab = "QLD", votes = 100)
process_ccd(data_2025, "2025 Federal Election")
#> No processing required for `2025 Federal Election`. Data returned unprocessed.
#>                   event state_ab votes
#> 1 2025 Federal Election      QLD   100